Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony CDPCX455 400 Disc MegaStorage CD Changer

I had great hope for this product. It has, mostly, so far, lived up to my expectations. Here are some caveats...

I was hoping for the ability to set up music catagories...easy listening, dinner music, light jazz...etc. You have to "cheat" to do this, and using the manual is daunting. Instead of using the "Artist" as artist, I used it as a catagory code, ie making one artist light jazz, etc. This works, but you do, of course lose the artist registration ability.

So now, I can select "artist" "Dinner Music" and then "All Discs" and "Shuffle", and the unit will play a track from one "Dinner Music" CD then shuffle to another track on another "Dinner Music" CD, etc, making a delightful, mix of music that never is repeated exactly the same way.

I am still in the loading phase of coexistance with this machine, so longetivty, and flawlessness are not being reviewed here. That remains to be seen.

The manual is purely awfull. Just dig in and try things. That's the only way to get a handle on things. Hope this helps....good luck!

They SAY they're fully linkable, but use extreme care when buying more that one unit for your very extensive collection. These things are all very intelligent machines-- too smart for their compatability with each other. They are "Master Drives," according to one Sony Rep, and are therefore not set up to be "Slaves." Sony will tell you that you can access 800 Total CDs, but instead of being able to purchase 2 of these guys at 400 each, you've got to get this one and 2 more 200 CD players. If you DO buy 2 of these, you have access to all 400 in your primary, but only 200 of the 400 possible in your secondary.

Now that I'm done writing to a miniscule portion of the public that might want to access 401-800 discs, I love mine. It's a convenient, wonderful machine. I feel like I'm in control of an entire radio station when I tell it to shuffle. Have fun.

The Sony CDPCX450 will handle a huge amount (400) of cd's. Certainly my entire collection. The two-way remote is cool and very functional allowing the remote to store the names and artists of each CD after you input this information into the changer.

The unit has all the features that you'd expect including an optical output.

My only gripe: The unit only allows 20 characters for song or artist names. This is not nearly enough characters for many CD's in my collection. So you end up having to abbreviate the titles and artists, which gets kind of funky. Also, the unit only allows ten characters for group names. Once again, not quite enough.

Otherwise this is a great changer and works well. Keep in mind that this unit does not play MP3's. Sony's CDPCX455 does.

This is the first CD changer that we purchased. What a difference it has made! We don't have to keep changing discs and we can jump to any disc we want quckily without having to search through a stack of CD's. My partner has his favorite CD's under his "artist's" name and I have mine under my name. We can then play our set anytime we want either in continuous mode or shuffle. We have 198 more "artist's" slots that we can program any number of discs to. If you have a combination of CD albums and individual tracks you can program upto 32 of them in one program. There are three program slots. Entering data was a pain but it was easier with a key board but once that is done you can sit back and enjoy the music. We made a list of all our CD's so we could refer to it. Also we put the CD's in different categories and left several slots open in each category so we can add more CD's in the future. I called Sony's customer service number twice on a Saturday afternoon and got through each time with out any problems. You first have to go through this very "real" sounding voice recognizing machine but then you will get to speak to somebody and they were very helpful with some functions that I did not follow.
We have used this great gadget for about two months and we have not had any scratches on our CD's. We are very happy with this product!

I have owned two of these players for about two years now. I have NEVER experienced ANY problems with them. I have a very large CD collection, and began ripping them to MP3 discs. Again, NO problems playing these discs either. I have been very pleased with this player and have the two connected in series so they go back and forth in random mode. Believe me, I have had dozens of CD players over the years, since 1984, and these are the best I have ever bought.